In a talk before the show, composer/founder Myk Freedman told the story of how the band originally came into its Tranzac residency by taking over the "ragtime" night — and the logic behind that leap is as easy to understand as is the fact that the old-guard crowd on hand didn't think they were proper at all. But the notion of a modern-day ragtime band, with a conception of improvisation based on group interaction more than backline-plus-soloists gets to the heart of what they are doing.

Saint Dirt Elementary School's Tranzac-fuelled heyday was before I was paying close attention to such things and I mostly knew it as a previous way-station for several musicians I'd more familiar with in subsequent projects. But despite the fact that Freedman moved from T.O. to NYC more than a decade ago, the band has remained an occasionally-ongoing concern, regrouping during Freedman's summer visits home and on special occasions such as this fifteenth-anniversary celebration. Pulling tunes from his songbooks, the band played a set focused on its older material, including these two tunes from what was a sort of "kissing" suite.

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Founded as a blog about one curmudgeon's love affair with the em dash, Mechanical Forest Sound has grown to become a community-based archive of local musical culture. Assuming that "independent music" isn't just boys with guitars and "culture" isn't just some sort of pageant, MFS is an investigation of a wide range of artists, reflecting on concerts as shared experiences, acts of citizenship and a chance to get down — fuzzy photographs and clear-sounding original live recordings a specialty.

Current manifestations of this project include Track Could Bend, a monthly concert series featuring "improvised music and weird rock offshoots", presented in a casual environment.

At one point I wrote full-on concert reviews, and for longer I thought I would catch up and write about shows in the past. But these days, because of, y'know, life, do not expect much in the way of full show reviews — but live recordings with blurbs will be posted as quickly after the fact as is feasible.

All MP3's on this blog are audience recordings shared as a reminder of the excitement of seeing live music. If you are an artist who doesn't want their music shared in this way, please contact me and I shall remove it forthwith.